
by Roberta Guiotto
En… chanting birds!
In this period, you can see many species of birds and listen to their melodious songs. Some green areas, such as the Pineta park, the Ca’ Silis park, the San Michele biodynamic farm and the lagoon host various species, including the migratory ones, which find some shelters there for the summer. Here you can admire robins, songbirds with a coloured breast; blackbirds with black plumage in male specimens, and reddish-brown in female ones; blue jays, which owe their name to the main colour of their plumage, marked by black and blue bands; peewits feeding on insects and weeds; sparrows, which are often seen on balconies looking for crumbs; hoopoes, migratory birds coming from central Africa, with a long beak, orange-red plumage, and white and white wings and tail, whose “hup-up-up” twitter can be heard. Watching and listening to birds is an educational activity to do with children: we can help our little winged friends in the search for food by building a manger to quietly admire them. For this project, you need a TetraPak package, scissors, wooden sticks or twigs, hot glue, acrylic paints and some seeds such as sesame, oats, millet or dried fruit such as hazelnuts. Rinse the cardboard, cut a semi-circular opening on both sides of it, remove the plastic spout and close the hole with hot glue using a leftover piece of cardboard, then paint the “house” in your favourite colours. For the roof, glue the sticks, make a hole under the opening on both sides and thread the wooden stick through. This will give birds a landing surface that can hang from a branch with some twine tied to the upper sides. Now let’s patiently wait for their arrival. Manine Verdi is held every Saturday morning at the San Michele biodynamic farm in Cortellazzo.
in collaboration with Manine verdi